All that, of course, hinges on McDaniel beating the Republican that Gov. Phil Bryant will soon name to fill Cochran's seat until the special election. Who can beat McDaniel is the overriding concern facing the governor along with other state GOP leaders. Bryant might be toughest for McDaniel to beat. Many have encouraged him to go for it, including President Donald Trump. But Bryant told the Clarion-Ledger last week, "I'm never going to run for office again." Another strong candidate would be former Gov. Haley Barbour. While unlikely, a Barbour vs. McDaniel contest would resemble the extraordinary race four years...

The new congressional map imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will be used in the 2018 elections, after courts rejected two challenges Monday. First, a panel of federal judges Monday dismissed a lawsuit challenging the new map imposed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, saying the Republican lawmakers who brought the challenge did not have standing — “We hold that the federal Elections Clause violations that the Plaintiffs allege are not the Plaintiffs’ to assert” — and that the case is not appropriate for the court to take up at this time. “In short, the Plaintiffs invite us to opine on...

Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn weighed in on Pennsylvania’s 16th congressional district special election result, crediting Rep.-elect Conor Lamb’s (D-PA) victory to the candidate going against the far left like Nancy Pelosi. “[A]fter so much talk that the party was moving to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders [the special Pennsylvania congressional election] really reaffirms the power of a centrist Democrat,” Penn told New York AM 970 radio’s “The Cats Roundtable” host John Catsimatidis. “I mean, Conor Lamb really took a lot of centrist positions. He backed a lot of what President Trump was saying. And he came out explicitly against...

U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine's nomination to lead NASA remains in serious jeopardy and his colleagues are suggesting President Donald Trump should soon nominate someone else. Bridenstine, a Tulsa Republican who was twice nominated to head the nation's space agency, has continued to draw the opposition of all Senate Democrats, independents and one Republican. A fellow Tulsa Republican, Sen. Jim Inhofe, has tried unsuccessfully to persuade that Republican senator to back Bridenstine. “I have talked to Marco — Senator Marco Rubio — and he doesn't like Jim Bridenstine,” Inhofe said of the junior senator from Florida. Florida's senators have effectively blocked...

Putin's thumping victory will extend his total time in office to nearly a quarter of a century, until 2024, by which time he will be 71. Only Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ruled for longer. Putin has promised to use his new term to beef up Russia's defences against the West and to raise living standards. None of the seven candidates who ran against him posed a threat, and opposition leader Alexei Navalny was barred from running. Critics alleged that officials had compelled people to come to the polls to ensure that voter boredom at the one-sided contest did not lead...

If the American Dream was flat-lining, the Trump administration may be acting as a defibrillator. Against furious opposition from within and without, President Trump is taking a step in line with the Republicans who made the GOP America’s Party. Snip Establishment Republicans present a cheap simulacrum of their former glory and are America’s Party no more, they are Wall Street’s party, wittingly or otherwise. The GOP is largely disconnected from the hearts and minds of Middle America, a consequence of a Republican establishment that has enshrined free trade—pro aris et focis be damned—as the singular sacred cow of our republic....

Andrew McCabe, a former acting and deputy FBI director who had drawn the ire of President Trump, was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday evening, a decision that raises troubling questions about the independence of both the Justice Department and the FBI.

...so he can get his full retirement. And it just might work. “My offer of employment to Mr. McCabe is a legitimate offer to work on election security,” Pocan said in a statement. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of American democracy and both Republicans and Democrats should be concerned about election integrity.”

Nancy Pelosi welcomes your hatred. Okay, that may be an exaggeration. But when the Republican Party spends so much of its time talking about her, you'd think she'd be a bit more perturbed. And there's no sign she is. She has good reason. We just saw yet another election in which Republicans tried everything they could do to tie the Democratic candidate to Pelosi, and he won anyway. Conor Lamb, the victor in that Pennsylvania special election, said at the campaign's outset that he wouldn't be voting for Pelosi for speaker in 2019 if he were elected, since he thought...

Elections involving Cook County judges seldom are as hotly contested as races further up the ballot. But one county-wide race is drawing an unusual amount of attention. The three-way primary for the vacant seat of Circuit Court Judge Dooling is turning out to be relatively rough-and-tumble, in the usually decorous fashion of judicial politics. The race pits public defender Tim Leeming against Tom Sianis, scion of the Billy Goat Tavern, and divorce attorney Corri Diane Fetman. Sianis has a better-funded campaign, and the name recognition that comes from his grandfather, Sam “Billy Goat” Sianis, the Greek immigrant restaurateur whose legendary...

Political analysts billed the special House election as a definitive referendum on Donald Trump's presidency. Democrats insisted that a young, moderate nominee would spark the imagination and enthusiasm of the "Resistance" in a previously safe GOP seat. Media outlets breathlessly covered the campaign on a moment-by-moment basis. The nation waited with bated breath as the returns came in. I'm not talking about Tuesday's special election in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district. I'm talking about last year's special election in the Georgia district of former Rep. Tom Price, who had begun a short-lived stint as health secretary under President Trump a few...

It is time for Republicans nationwide to wake up to the very real threat of a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, the current House minority leader. This wake-up call is also for President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Neither they, nor any other Republican, should underestimate how disastrous it would be for their policies and for the country to have a left-wing Democratic majority in the House. Under Speaker Pelosi, there would be two years of investigations, fights over spending (to reduce defense and increase liberal dependency programs), efforts to undo President Trump’s deregulation...

It is not immediately evident why anyone, or at least anyone outside Ohio, should care much about what John Kasich says or thinks. The lame-duck governor has already run for president twice and lost. He's not a particularly charismatic or appealing figure. And to the extent most people in America know who he is, it's probably from his role as a marginal and somewhat irritating participant in the 2016 Republican primaries. To those in need of a refresher, he was the one who kept talking about how his dad was a mailman. Still, the guy clearly thinks of himself as...

RUSH: Grab sound bite No. 3. Mike Murphy, Republican consultant extraordinaire — this is the guy that ran Jeb Bush’s campaign, hundred thousand dollars, got three delegates, he and Mark McKinnon are the two probably most prominent Republican consultants out there. They’re both on CNN last night with — well, I don’t know if they both were on with Don Lemon or not, but the first one is Murphy on CNN Tonight. And he says the problem that the Republicans have in the November elections is Trump, Trump, Trump, that’s the problem, and it’s a problem the Republicans just cannot...

Billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur Peter Thiel predicts that Donald Trump will get a second term in 2020. “I think that if he runs again, he will get re-elected,” Thiel said at an event hosted by the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. Thiel also expects that it’s “probably the case” that the Democrats will do “quite well” in the midterm elections this fall. “The question about 2020 is a much trickier one,” Thiel said. “It’s really one of — is there anything that was learned from Hillary Clinton’s defeat?” He added that he thinks there’s a “vague parallel”...

Eight Republicans have stepped forward before a Thursday evening filing deadline to challenge former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the Utah Senate race, including a state lawmaker who says an "establishment insider" can't fix problems in Washington. Many of the candidates acknowledge the David-vs-Goliath nature of challenging the famous and popular Romney, but they say someone needs to keep the race to replace Republican Orrin Hatch from becoming a "coronation." "I think he's just expecting to run away with this thing," Republican candidate Sam Parker said. "There are really motivated individuals who are going to do their best to...

The PA-18 race isnâ€™t over yet (there could still be a recount), but even the prospect of a narrow win by Democratic candidate Conor Lamb is being taken as a sign by Democrats looking for a path to victory in 2018. Republicans spent millions on ads tying Lamb to Nancy Pelosi. That attempt to nationalize the race and tie the Dem candidate to the unpopular party leader has worked for Republicans in the past. But this time, Lamb came out of the gate distancing himself from Pelosi, saying he would not support her for Speaker if Democrats took back...

It’s a busy time of year, so we’ll keep this relatively short. But I wanted to echo and underscore a point made by FiveThirtyEight contributor Nathaniel Rakich in his article on Tuesday’s special election in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District. One reason that the results are especially scary for Republicans — Democrat Conor Lamb is the apparent winner1 in a district that President Trump won by 20 percentage points — is because it came on reasonably high turnout, the sort of turnout one might expect in this year’s midterms. As of early Wednesday morning, about 228,000 votes had been counted in...